A blog about digital rhetoric that asks the burning questions about electronic bureaucracy and institutional subversion on the Internet.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Remember You Are Always a Princess

The title of this posting comes from the last line that expresses the weird pathos of this distraught mother's video. Now this particular child abduction case has become even more complex, since the father in the story has been implicated in a San Marino murder case from the 1980s that took place among the social set that I knew well from my nearby prep school. (My hometown newspaper carries more of the story here.)

But what is remarkable about this YouTube video is how a direct appeal to the public -- totally without the news media being involved -- is used for a situation that was once merely relegated to the paperwork of family court. However, women aren't the only ones making appeals in child custody cases. See this montage of images from an estranged father for an oddly visually ambitious example.

Bitter divorce videos have also become a YouTube staple, such as this extra-judicial one from Tricia Walsh Smith.